Twice now, I’ve started reviews this week to try and focus on something other than my job, after playing some lighthearted games. As the weekend drew near, I suddenly realized.. Halloween is tomorrow. Being busy at work should be no excuse for forgetting one of my favorite holidays, but being busy enough that I forgot to play and review thematically appropriate games not once, but twice just feels preposterous. I decided to set out to play something I haven’t heard many people talk about since it came out back in 1999, a game I was largely unfamiliar with outside of unflattering reviews of the time; a playstation survival horror game called Echo Night.

I have a shameful secret that I’ll share with you now. I am absolutely terrible at Tactical RPG’s. Time and again, I’ve begun a game, teetered on the edge of holding my own before finally falling down in the mud. One of the games that I’ve tried this with was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. After my last attempt a few years ago where I just kept having the floor wiped with me, I threw in the towel. Recently, a friend of mine has helped me ease into playing Final Fantasy Tactics, and I’ve gotten a rekindled interest in the genre under his heavy-handed job class coaching. So I decided to revisit the Ogre series fresh, with a title I hadn’t explored before. When I popped the game on, I hadn’t quite realized what I was going to be getting into with Ogre Battle 64.

As I have mentioned in the past, I was raised on the Genesis, and stubbornly wanted to stick with Sega when I was ready to buy another system. It should come as no shock that I was a prolific and diehard defender of the Dreamcast when it came out. On the other hand, as an RPG lover, I was always really scrambling to find good RPG’s on the Dreamcast. There are certainly a couple, but for such a powerful system, it was mostly delivering good arcade style games over roleplaying games of any sort. Enter Grandia II: a game that finally romps its way onto the JRPG scene for a console that wasn’t Playstation, and seemed promising.

With my last article, I talked about a well known title that is much beloved, little understood or a frustrated mixture of the two, PaRappa the Rappa. It’s the first modern rhythm game, and really started a genre all of its own. I mentioned the fact that it’s direct sequel, PaRappa the Rappa 2, was a damn tragedy in comparison. What I avoided discussing was the spiritual sequel, a game that takes place with some of the same characters, in the same town and strange universe: Um Jammer Lammy.

I would like to say I have an eclectic taste in gaming. Though I’ve written about a rhythm game before (you remember, don’t you!?), it’s been quite some time since I’ve picked one up. I’ve played through Gitaroo Man, but I never picked up PaRappa the Rapper, what I would call the first modern rhythm game. I remember hearing people dismiss it as Simon spruced up to be a videogame, and although I had a friend who I saw play it and liked it, I just hadn’t given it a play through myself… until now.